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Google Trends is another free service that shows you online interest
on any topic or keyword. All you have to do is go to the Google Trends
website and enter a word. A graph then instantly pops up displaying,
since 2004, how often the term is searched.
Trends also shows you
how many times the search term has been associated to a Google News
story. When it detects an increase in the volume of news stories for a
particular term, it labels the graph and shows a news story headline
that was posted around the time of the spike.
What’s even cooler
is that Google Trends lets you compare the frequency of terms being
searched against one another. In the search box simply type your terms
separated by a comma (For example: music, rock, classic). When the
search results pop up, the graph displays multiple coloured lines
representing each term.
Let’s try an example. “Web content
management” was most searched by people in Bangalore, India. Searching
for the term stabilised over time, as back in early 2004 searches for
the term had higher peaks and lower valleys. Mid-way through 2004, a
Google News headline read “Evaluations of Web Content Management
Markets”.
Ok great. But what’s so exciting about this tool? For
those of you have yet to figure it out, Google Trends opens up a world
of marketing implications and opportunities. Google is essentially
giving away unfiltered access to the interests of millions of people
around the globe. As one newspaper put it, ‘with a few clicks the world
is your focus group’.
Want to hone your Google Adwords campaign?
Plunk in a number of keywords into Trends to see which ones people are
searching for. With that knowledge, your Adwords campaign will receive
more hits and you’ll be paying for words that people in your target
market are actually searching for. If you’re not using Adwords, you can
compare your company’s brand with the competition or just find out how
interested people are in various topics.
Still in beta development, Google Trends can help you spot
trends. In the near future, it may just evolve into a tool with some predictive characteristics—something extremely useful to
marketers, as well to anyone else who would find it useful to compare
brands over time.
Google Trends does
have a shortcoming. It’s based only on a subset of Google searches and
specific term choice can make a massive difference. If you search for
the plural, rather than the singular form of a word, your results will
vary.
And sometimes the terms you search will come up with no
results at all. A term has to be searched hundreds
of times a week for the trends to show up. A somewhat obscure term will
not show up, particularly when limited by region or date.
Yet
it’s quite possible that Trends will be used by marketers or anyone
else interested in increasing their websites position on Google. To try
it out for yourself, visit http://www.google.com/trends.
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